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Ahaetulla Sahyadrensis
''Ahaetulla sahyadrensis'' is a species of tree snake endemic to the Western Ghats of India. It is also reported from Bangladesh. Taxonomy It was formerly considered conspecific with '' A. pulverulenta'' (now considered to be restricted to Sri Lanka), and was described as a subspecies of it (''A. p. indica'') by Paulus Edward Pieris Deraniyagala in 1955. However, a 2020 study recovered it as a distinct species. In addition, a now-defunct subspecies of '' Ahaetulla prasina'', ''A. p. indica'', was described by Rudolf Mell in 1931. Thus, the combination ''Ahaetulla pulverulenta indica'' would be a homonym to ''Ahaetulla prasina indica''. To solve this, a new replacement name, ''A. sahyadrensis'', was erected in 2020. Geographic range This species is the most widespread of all vine snakes endemic to the Western Ghats, ranging from Gujarat south to Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is also reported from Bangladesh. Habitat It is found in moist deciduous and evergreen forests from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South Canara, and Thiruvithamkoor. Spread over , Kerala is the 21st largest Indian state by area. It is bordered by Karnataka to the north and northeast, Tamil Nadu to the east and south, and the Lakshadweep Sea to the west. With 33 million inhabitants as per the 2011 census, Kerala is the 13th-largest Indian state by population. It is divided into 14 districts with the capital being Thiruvananthapuram. Malayalam is the most widely spoken language and is also the official language of the state. The Chera dynasty was the first prominent kingdom based in Kerala. The Ay kingdom in the deep south and the Ezhimala kingdom in the north formed the other kingdoms in the early years of the Common Era (CE). The region had been a prominent spic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gujarat
Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth-most populous state, with a population of 60.4 million. It is bordered by Rajasthan to the northeast, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu to the south, Maharashtra to the southeast, Madhya Pradesh to the east, and the Arabian Sea and the Pakistani province of Sindh to the west. Gujarat's capital city is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. The Gujaratis are indigenous to the state and their language, Gujarati, is the state's official language. The state encompasses 23 sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation (more than any other state). The most important sites are Lothal (the world's first dry dock), Dholavira (the fifth largest site), and Gola Dhoro (where 5 uncommon seals were found). Lothal i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snakes Of Asia
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reptiles Of India
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates ( lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians (tuatara). As of March 2022, the Reptile Database includes about 11,700 species. In the traditional Linnaean classification system, birds are considered a separate class to reptiles. However, crocodilians are more closely related to birds than they are to other living reptiles, and so modern cladistic classification systems include birds within Reptilia, redefining the term as a clade. Other cladistic definitions abandon the term reptile altogether in favor of the clade Sauropsida, which refers to all amniotes more closely related to modern reptiles than to mammals. The study of the traditional reptile orders, historically combined with that of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. The earliest known proto-reptiles originate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahaetulla
''Ahaetulla,'' commonly referred to as Asian vine snakes or Asian whip snakes, is a genus of colubrid snakes distributed throughout tropical Asia. They are considered by some scientists to be mildly venomous and are what is commonly termed as 'rear-fanged' or more appropriately, opisthoglyphous, meaning their enlarged teeth or fangs, intended to aid in venom delivery, are located in the back of the upper jaw, instead of in the front as they are in vipers or cobras. As colubrids, Ahaetulla do not possess a true venom gland or a sophisticated venom delivery system. The Duvernoy's gland of this genus, homologous to the venom gland of true venomous snakes, produces a secretion which, though not well studied, is considered not to be medically significant to humans. Green-colored members of this genus are often referred to as green vine snakes. They are not to be confused with the "green vine snake" ''Oxybelis fulgidus'', which convergently appears very similar but is found in Central ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perennial Stream
A perennial stream is a stream that has continuous flow of surface water throughout the year in at least parts of its catchment during seasons of normal rainfall, Water Supply Paper 494. as opposed to intermittent river, one whose flow is intermittent. In the absence of irregular, prolonged or extreme drought, a perennial stream is a watercourse, or segment, element or emerging body of water which continually delivers groundwater. For example, an damming, artificial disruption of stream, variability in flow or stream selection associated with the activity in hydropower installations, do not affect this status. Perennial streams do not include stagnant water (stream pool, pools and puddle, waterholes), reservoirs, oxbow lake, cutoff lakes and ponds that persist throughout the year. All other streams, or parts of them, should be considered seasonal rivers or lakes. The stream can cycle from intermittent to perpetual through multiple iterations. Stream Definition The basic conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tropical Evergreen Forests Of India
Tropical evergreen forests of India are found in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Western Ghats, which fringe the Arabian Sea, the coastline of peninsular India, and the greater Assam region in the north-east. Small remnants of evergreen forest are found in Odisha state. Semi-evergreen forest is more extensive than the evergreen formation partly because evergreen forests tend to degrade to semi-evergreen with human interference. There are substantial differences between the three major evergreen forest regions.The average annual rainfall is 65-75 inches. The Western Ghats tropical wet evergreen forests are classified into low-, medium-, and high-elevation types. The Western Ghats monsoon forests occur both on the western (ghats) margins of the coastal and on the eastern side where there is less rainfall. These forests contain several tree species of great commercial significance (e.g. Indian rosewood ''(Dalbergia latifolia)'', Malabar Kino ''(Pterocarpus marsupium)'', teak '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seasonal Tropical Forest
Seasonal tropical forest, also known as moist deciduous, semi-evergreen seasonal, tropical mixed or monsoon forests, typically contain a range of tree species: only some of which drop some or all of their leaves during the dry season. This tropical forest is classified under the Walter system as (i) tropical climate with high overall rainfall (typically in the 1000–2500 mm range; 39–98 inches) and (ii) having a very distinct wet season with (an often cooler “winter”) dry season. These forests represent a range of habitats influenced by monsoon (Am) or tropical wet savannah (Aw) climates (as in the Köppen climate classification). Drier forests in the Aw climate zone are typically deciduous and placed in the Tropical dry forest biome: with further transitional zones (ecotones) of savannah woodland then tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. Distribution Seasonal (mixed) tropical forests can be found in many parts of the tropical zone, wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the most densely populated countries in the world, and shares land borders with India to the west, north, and east, and Myanmar to the southeast; to the south it has a coastline along the Bay of Bengal. It is narrowly separated from Bhutan and Nepal by the Siliguri Corridor; and from China by the Indian state of Sikkim in the north. Dhaka, the capital and largest city, is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Chittagong, the second-largest city, is the busiest port on the Bay of Bengal. The official language is Bengali, one of the easternmost branches of the Indo-European language family. Bangladesh forms the sovereign part of the historic and ethnolinguistic region of Bengal, which was divided during the Partition of India in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India by population, sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language—one of the longest surviving Classical languages of India, classical languages in the world—is widely spoken in the state and serves as its official language. The state lies in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and is bordered by the Indian union territory of Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, as well as an international maritime border with Sri Lanka. It is bounded by the Western Ghats in the west, the Eastern Ghats in the north, the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait to the south-eas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homonym (biology)
In biology, a homonym is a name for a taxon that is identical in spelling to another such name, that belongs to a different taxon. The rule in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is that the first such name to be published is the senior homonym and is to be used (it is " valid"); any others are junior homonyms and must be replaced with new names. It is, however, possible that if a senior homonym is archaic, and not in "prevailing usage," it may be declared a ''nomen oblitum'' and rendered unavailable, while the junior homonym is preserved as a ''nomen protectum''. :For example: :* Cuvier proposed the genus ''Echidna'' in 1797 for the spiny anteater. :*However, Forster had already published the name ''Echidna'' in 1777 for a genus of moray eels. :*Forster's use thus has priority, with Cuvier's being a junior homonym. :*Illiger published the replacement name ''Tachyglossus'' in 1811. Similarly, the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paulus Edward Pieris Deraniyagala
Paulus Edward Pieris Deraniyagala (1900–1976) was a Sri Lankan paleontologist, zoologist, and artist. Early life and education He was born in Colombo, the son of Paul Edward Pieris and Lady Hilda Obeyesekere Pieris. He had two younger brothers, Justin Pieris Deraniyagala, Ralph St. Louis Pieris Deraniyagala, and a sister, Miriam Pieris Deraniyagala. He was educated at S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a BA in 1922 and an Oxbridge MA in 1923. He entered Harvard University for a year, where he was awarded a Master of Arts in 1924. Career He specialised in fauna and human fossils of the Indian subcontinent. From 1939 to 1963, he was the director of the National Museum of Ceylon, and from 1961 to 1964, he was also the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Vidyodaya University. He described several fossils and proposed scientific names for species and subspecies, with several now identified as dubious, including: *Sri Lankan rhinoceros ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
